Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World • Hacker News Board

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#91

Post by wildsatchmo » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #80

spookthesunset wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you go the traditional route, you will always have a company in the middle, taking their cut or selling you out behind the scenes. The free market sure seems to be okay with this. Those middle men provide valuable services like chargebacks, lines of credit, the ability to quickly provide large sums of money without using wheelbarrows to cart them around. > I'm on the hype train. You, and almost every other block…

> Bitcoin attracts the perfect intersection of people who don't understand economics, math, computer science, finance, business, or politics. Bitcoin is deeply flawed in all those areas. i can somewhat +1 this just based on anecdotal evidence. a bunch of guys released an ICO and gathered about 15 mil in funding who ive met. i expected them to be extremely smart but i've found that they lucked out and simply wrote up…

This one makes me a little sad. I was very into bitcoin and blockchain ideas early on and the ICO fever has poisoned the well a bit. The money is attracting the types you're describing but IMO the only people who knew anything about BTC in the early days were exactly the kinds of people who knew a lot about about economics, cryptography, finance, business, government, politics, and philosophy. It seems obvious to me that the intersection of these things informed bitcoin's core design concepts. Some people think the system we have now is deeply flawed and needs a redesign, others don't. Those who don't might find it hard to see the utility in bitcoin.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#92

Post by geraldbauer » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 5:02 PM UTC

mmcnl wrote: post #40

geraldbauer wrote: post #12

FYI: I've put together a collection of blockchains (in JavaScript, Python, Ruby) and articles at Awesome Blockchains - https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-blockchains . The idea is that to learn about blockchains build one (or two) from scratch. Not a crypto god? Or a JavaScript ninja/rockstar. No worries. Yes, you can. Happy blockchaining.

This is great, however the real strength of blockchain lies in it being a distributed database. These are all single node examples. Would love to see some examples of a simple network based blockchain

Add your single node example onto git than it's distributed :-). For rolling your own peer-to-peer network and nodes see the starter articles linked in the Awesome Blockchains page that include examples in JavaScript, Go, etc. Happy blockchaining.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#93

Post by xiphias » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 5:14 PM UTC

wildsatchmo wrote: post #91

volkk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin attracts the perfect intersection of people who don't understand economics, math, computer science, finance, business, or politics. Bitcoin is deeply flawed in all those areas. i can somewhat +1 this just based on anecdotal evidence. a bunch of guys released an ICO and gathered about 15 mil in funding who ive met. i expected them to be extremely smart but i've found that they lucked out and simply wrote up…

This one makes me a little sad. I was very into bitcoin and blockchain ideas early on and the ICO fever has poisoned the well a bit. The money is attracting the types you're describing but IMO the only people who knew anything about BTC in the early days were exactly the kinds of people who knew a lot about about economics, cryptography, finance, business, government, politics, and philosophy. It seems obvious to me…

I see Bitcoin an amazing store of value as it is. Of course I'm excited for the improvements that are coming to it (ring signatures being used to increase privacy of the system, Schorr signatures to make multiple signatures aggragatable).

Cryptography is going through a new booming period.

Just skip the hype part and look at the math part..if an improvement is not using cryptography (for example the elliptic curve group directly), it most likely is not critical for scalability of the system.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#94

Post by DennisP » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #64

DennisP wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding third parties, on a blockchain you don't have to trust them to hold your money. You can set up a 2-of-3 scheme where if the two primaries agree then the third party never gets involved, and if they disagree then the third party decides where the money goes, and only then gets a cut. Advantage: in the absence of a dispute, this system is free.

Since when is the blockchain free? You still have to pay a transaction fee. And with your scheme there's still the problem of how do you scale it? Even if you hope that you'll be able to settle the transaction without disagreement you still have to select a third party "just in case". I can't see working at scale unless you have "professional" third parties with good reputation who will be able to oversee a big numbe…

Yes, there's the standard transaction fee, but on Ethereum that would be about a penny. My point is there'd be no fee to the third party, in the absence of a dispute. In that case the third party would do no work. They don't even have to know about the transactions where they're designated "just in case."

The fee when there is a dispute would have to be higher; I'd argue that this isn't terrible, since it gives the primaries a stronger incentive to work things out on their own.

Obviously it would help to have some kind of reputation system for arbitrators. That doesn't necessarily have to be on chain; anything that lets both primaries agree on an arbitrator is fine.

The contract is what forces the payment; the money in question is held by the contract, and if the arbitrator makes the decision, the contract automatically deducts the fee from the held funds and pays it.

You're right that sometimes people ignore why the current system works, but the flip side is dismissing blockchain solutions without first understanding how they work.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#95

Post by DennisP » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #75

DennisP wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding third parties, on a blockchain you don't have to trust them to hold your money. You can set up a 2-of-3 scheme where if the two primaries agree then the third party never gets involved, and if they disagree then the third party decides where the money goes, and only then gets a cut. Advantage: in the absence of a dispute, this system is free.

> this system is free. Free? Who pays for the blockchain? Last I looked into it, each transaction requires about enough electricity to power a house for an entire day. That isn't very free.

That's an average including all the mining rewards, it's not actually paid by people issuing transactions. A simple transaction on Ethereum costs about a penny.

I agree the energy consumption of present-day blockchains is a problem; hopefully proof of stake will fix it.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#96

Post by flowctrl » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

flowctrl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- There are newer blockchain dApp platforms that are WAY faster than Ethereum (i.e. EOS, Quantum...) - Proof of Work isn't the only consensus algorithm, there are ones with lower computational costs, such as Proof of Stake - See IPFS, and there are other distributed storage solutions - One can add new ledger entries that refer to previous ones, to correct them Aside from transparency (and note that privacy is also an…

> Proof of Work isn't the only consensus algorithm, there are ones with lower computational costs, such as Proof of Stake PoS still doesn't exist in the real world, as far as I know. > See IPFS, and there are other distributed storage solutions IPFS has nothing to do with blockchains per se, though for better or worse (IMO for worse), the team working on it is also heavily involved with the cryptocurrency world. You…

> PoS still doesn't exist in the real world, as far as I know.

* BitShares and Steemit both use it, and I believe the forthcoming EOS network will as well. See https://bitshares.org/technology/delegated-proof-of-stake-co...

* Ethereum has successfully tested a new hybrid PoW/PoS system and is rolling it out on the main network soon. Links in this article: https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-big-switch-the-new-roadma...

* PoS was just an example - there are a range of consensus algorithms that are not proof of work, which was the very first one. Ripple is a "real world" blockchain that does not use proof of work: https://ripple.com/build/xrp-ledger-consensus-process/

* Here's a few other consensus algorithms: https://www.coindesk.com/short-guide-blockchain-consensus-pr...

> because if you make a single mistake in the code and lose all your money, there will be - by design - literally no one to help you.

Actually there are, by design, roll-back mechanisms that can be deployed if the majority of the network agrees to carry it out. I believe the current controversy in the Bitcoin network is partially over the removal of such a mechanism. Various other blockchains and blockchain-like networks have correction mechanisms. Also note, its not always about storing money - thats just one use.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#97

Post by Jasper_ » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

> If so, then blockchain technology could get rid of Uber, Netflix, and every flight-insurance provider on the market.

No, it can't. The hard part of Uber isn't the app and the architecture that gets cars to meet together, it's pulling all the shady under-belly moves to avoid taxi regulation or lobby it in your favor, all while being profitable. I've seen quite a few "how I made an Uber clone in a day" posts on here. The tech is boring and simple, the business model and empire is what's important.

Similarly, there were dozens of streaming sites before Netflix and Spotify, but they never took off. Talking with media companies, getting licenses, negotiating royalties, hell, even funding your own productions to attract talent, that's the hard part. Blockchain tech doesn't solve this, it just replaces the MySQL in their complex tech stack.

Sure, these companies can replace their database with blockchain, but that won't stop "middle men" like Netflix from existing, it just... changes their tech stack.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#98

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #70

wildsatchmo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at all these pessimistic comments I can't help but wonder if this is what the op eds in the newspaper looked like while the internet was being built. "its too slow, and even with our best compression transferring a movie would take a month. Not gonna happen. Computers are too expensive for most households." etc. If you want to keep middle men in between most things that we could potentially do programmaticall…

> I'm on the hype train That’s the intellectual blind spot which is making this so hard to understand: you’re invested in the technology and want to see it succeed, which means you’re inclined to minimize every downside and boost every possible use without asking whether something is better in addition to being possible. Being old enough to remember when the internet was starting to go mainstream, there were op-eds l…

>>In contrast, we have a ton of blockchain hype without a single legal use which solves a problem normal people care about better than existing, well-tested technology.

Maybe this is your blind spot? You assume it has to be legal to be useful.

But in any case, there are legal use cases that work today: sending money with very little friction, including no need to provide a trusted third party or the payee your personally identifiable information.

With Ethereum, we'll soon have social networks and markets that participants can trust will not have fees increased and terms changed once the platform has become dominant. So you can have monopolies without monopolists.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#99

Post by HillRat » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 6:44 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #59

endymi0n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confirmation Bias at work. You're invested, so you want it to take off. Yet none of those blockchain enthusiasts could tell me a single USP that blockchains had over storage in a normal database on any concrete use case, with the sole exception of cryptocurrencies. And the reason is simple: all those applications have none of the properties and problems the blockchain solves - which is an elegant niche solution tailo…

> you want to be able to roll back transactions under certain conditions Yup, refunds are the basis of customer service.

To be fair -- and I'm no blockchain booster -- transactional rollbacks should be modeled as separate operations and replacement transactions on an immutable log (or loggish thing, anyway). You can use bitemporal tracking to model invalid belief states, but your system should never be allowed to drop transactions.

Re: Blockchains: How They Work and Why They’ll Change the World

#100

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Oct 05, 2017, 6:47 PM UTC

Jasper_ wrote: post #97

TheReveller wrote: post #5

From the article: Can a blockchain find people offering rides, link them up with people who are trying to go somewhere, and give the two parties a transparent platform for payment? Can a blockchain act as a repository and a replay platform for TV shows, movies, and other digital media while keeping track of royalties and paying content creators? Can a blockchain check the status of airline flights and pay travelers a…

> If so, then blockchain technology could get rid of Uber, Netflix, and every flight-insurance provider on the market. No, it can't. The hard part of Uber isn't the app and the architecture that gets cars to meet together, it's pulling all the shady under-belly moves to avoid taxi regulation or lobby it in your favor, all while being profitable. I've seen quite a few "how I made an Uber clone in a day" posts on here.…

>No, it can't. The hard part of Uber isn't the app and the architecture that gets cars to meet together, it's pulling all the shady under-belly moves to avoid taxi regulation or lobby it in your favor, all while being profitable.

This is where the blockchain shines. You're not going to be able to sue a Dapp, or order it to be taken down. The only enforcement mechanism becomes going after end-users, which is much more difficult than going after the trusted third party running the service.

I think increasing the cost of enforcing restrictions on trade is great from a societal perspective, given using the political system to restrict trade is highly profitable and thus overly done, but whether it's good or bad is beside the point that this is something that the blockchain architecture can do that the centralized server architecture can't.